unsolicited emails from golflogic?

[GolfaLicious]

Got this email from Par Patrol today...basically a former partner of ParPatrol stole some personal info and started up his own company, now ParPatrol is taking action...

February 16, 2006

Dear Valued Par Patrol Member,

As several of you have informed us, a competitor to our company has been sending you unsolicited emails regarding a golf-savings program not unlike our own. This email is to inform you of this situation and provide you with the means to lodge a formal complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commission of Canada.

The company at hand, owned and operated by a former partner of ParPatrol.com, who unbeknownst to us was setting up direct competition to Par Patrol while employed by our organization. It was during his time of employment that the alleged person had access to sensitive records and information on many levels, and we now know that some of this information has been compromised.

Information that has not been comprised includes:

ˇGeneral contact information (name, address, city, province, country, phone)
ˇUser preferences (personal preferences in regards to courses of play, etc.)
ˇFinancial Information (credit card, banking information, etc.)

Information that has been comprised includes:

ˇYour email address used upon account creation (this email address)

As you know, we here at ParPatrol.com are committed to customer satisfaction. You, as a member, are our highest regarded asset. We hold all of your information (personal and not) in utmost trust and confidentiality as per our privacy policy and never sell or trade your information. Our privacy policy is completely compliant with PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) and can be found linked through to from any page of our website.

We find it unfortunate and apologize that your email address was compromised. We also ask for your help in taking action against this knock-off company. We have spoken with several representatives from provincial and federal government, specifically in relation to your personal privacy and have determined that we need your permission to include you on a list of customers who have been wronged to submit our official case with.

We are not seeking any monetary damages from this intended litigation - and should any monetary rewards come from a successful conviction - they will be evenly dispersed among the offended Par Patrol members - we will retain nothing.

If you have personally received unsolicited emails from the company GolfLogic.ca at any point between June 2005 and today, please let us know by clicking here and sending us an email. Only your name, city and province will be included on the officially lodged complaint. Thank you for your understand and we look forward to your loyalty.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Campbell
President

[GolfLogic]

Thanks for making this post Golfalicious. This was from a former business partner who I was associated with at Par Patrol. As many of you are aware, I left Par Patrol last year when I found out he had been stealing money and when I noticed creditors asking for money and he didn't have it to pay.

At that time I left to start Golflogic. I built my email list by partnering with Ontgolf.ca and UMM.ca and sent joint emails to almost 25,000 people to helo build my email list. From that there was obviously names who were also Par Patrol Members. It is also VERY important to note that our emails have a 45% open rate which is more than double the industry average and we have less than a 1% unsubscribe rate. This is not common with Spam.

The Par Patrol owner is in deep financial trouble owing a lot of money to a lot of people including money to TGN (not much money but nonetheless, he owes TGN money). He then had friends and family members sign up to Golflogic late last year and early this year then turn around and have them accuse us of spamming them. I am not saying you are working with him either but he has also had friends post false messages on message boards claiming similar. Until now I brushed it off.

This email he sent out is not only false but it is extremely slanderous and as you can imagine, our lawyers are taking immediete action.

Financial problems obviously make people do horrible things and I truly feel for the owner of Par Patrol but his actions at the time (and now) are unacceptbale. Also, if you look at Par Patrol, which hasn't been touched all year and Golflogic, we are 2 very different web sites. We have expanded to include Blogs, interviews, news, new content and guest writers coming this week.

We also have an article in the Globe and Mail coming out this week which I will let you know about.

At the end of the day, Golflogic is about providing free deals to golfers in Ontario and we hope you enjoy our service.

If you have any further questions, comments or even complaints, please PM me or contact me directly. nigel@golflogic.ca

Thanks

[East Coast Golfer]

I side with golflogic hands down..

keep up the great work.

[westbeach]

So, what kind of services does either party provide? Is it like lastminutegolfers.com?

[GolfLogic]

we offer free deals to golf courses and ranges across Ontario. We are similar to last minute golfers except we have weekly ongoing deals PLUS we also send out weekly (if available) golf deals which our courses send to us.

Right now we have some cool deals at ranges in the GTA area...and it is free to access:
http://www.golflogic.ca/golf-deals.html

[mikejb]

Okay. I have no experience with either side. So can someone please comment weather one party or another owes this web site money. This COULD BE a he said, she said. I have no idea. Could a 3rd party make a comment without saying anything without causing too much trouble? (if possible)

[duffer_devon]

Here's what I can say about my experience. I was approached by Nigel when he was part of Par Patrol and paid a membership fee to Par Patrol for their membership cards for all my Tour members. They were to receive weekly e-mail updates and golf discounts to the Par PAtrol affiliated golf courses.

Everything went along fine until the first week of June. After that no weekly e-mails were ever sent to my members or me. Nothing was updated on the Par Patrol Membership for the rest of the season.

Nigel approached me in late July and was very apologetic about the service of Par Patrol and advised me that he was going to start Golf Logic and said he would not charge me for any Duffer;s Dream TOur members who wanted to join.
To me that was a stand-up thing to do.

I am not privvy to any financial troubles, however, I have never received any contact from the other members of Par Patrol or even an apology.